Bad Italian: Carluccios Caffes

Carluccios is a chain of Italian restaurants in the UK (possibly elsewhere in the world too).

This is the boss, Antonio Carluccio:

Nice man, I’d trust him with my dinner. But he isn’t the one making my dinner…

So tonight I took the kids and other half to Carluccio’s. “Can’t we go to pizza express instead” said the other half, “the menu in Carluccio’s is so…complicated.”

Alas Pizza Express was queued up so Carluccio’s it was. There was a little queue and after waiting for 20 mins, someone came up to us and said it would be a 20 minute wait. Fine, we said and stood there for a good 30 minutes before being seated.

Before my ass hit the chair the waiter accosted us “What to drink?” “Emmm…we’re not sure yet” he huffed and stormed off.

“Our kitchen is-a very busy” said the waiter. Fine we said and ordered some bread to nibble on, whilst the ever surly waiter surled away. Megan and her big sis then moaned every minute about how hungry they were, whilst the other half moaned about how cold he was.

Finally, after 45 minutes arrived. But I was thinking – how does pasta take THAT long to cook. The restaurant was winding down by the time we got there in that it was now slightly less then half full. Most people were already eating their mains – and I don’t care what you say, but boiling some pasta and chucking in some sauce doesn’t take THAT long. Having family in catering, you know when a restaurant is truly heaving…this one wasn’t.

Anyway I had the clam pasta, Megs and El boyf had Lasagne, and Big sis had mushroom pasta.

My clam pasta was….bad. It was plain spaghetti in a load of water, some chilli on it and a few tiny, tastless clams. This is a £9 pasta! I could buy enough dried pasta for a year for £9! Then Megs and the boyfs lasagne looked like one from the microwave – tasteless again and quite small. £8. Big sis’s mushroom pasta was an epic fail – it was supposed to have Porcini, Oyster, Shittake, Button mushrooms. There were ONLY button mushrooms in there and no one even said anything – £8 bowl of water, pasta and button mushrooms.

I haven’t had a meal that bad for a long time – completely tastless, and unacceptable considering how expensive the food is for what it is.